From the day my doctor said yes, they “did find cancer,” everything has been different. First came a five-hour surgery to remove a walnut-size tumor from a gland next to my right ear. A month later came the cancer patient’s obligatory ritual: six weeks of five-days-a-week radiation sessions, plus chemotherapy.
I was lucky to have a devoted husband, family and clan of friends supporting me through that first round of treatment, but sometimes I hit bottom anyway. Coming home from the infusion center one evening in the winter of 2014 after an all- day chemo cocktail, I was numb, exhausted … despairing. I faced an overwhelming new truth: at age 57, I had become a forever cancer patient, destined to exist on the razor’s edge between life and death as dictated by radiologists, then suffer a lot, then end.
via Whisker Therapy